Analysis of Poem Deffered Dream

HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON

Analyzing a Poem Stylistic Devices in “A Dream Deferred” What is life worth without dreams and the hope that INTRODUCTION

Attention-getting opener

those dreams can come true someday? What happens when the achievement of a dream is postponed —again and again? Langston Hughes’s creates a way for many voices to respond to their deferred dreams in a collection of over eighty short

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poems, published under the title Montage of a Dream Deferred. Thesis (with title and author)

In one of those short poems in the collection, titled “A Dream Deferred,” or “Harlem” in the Montage, Langston Hughes answers these questions by using the stylistic devices of diction, figurative language, and sound to show that keeping people from achieving their dreams can have destructive consequences.

BODY

First stylistic device: diction

The first stylistic device—diction—gives important information about the speaker in “ A Dream Deferred.” In

"Harlem" ("Dream Deferred") from Collected Poems by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. From "Montage of a Dream Deferred" from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1959 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.

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Analyzing a Poem Hughes’s Montage—a collection of individual parts arranged to create an overall impression—a variety of different speakers address the question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Each voice in Montage, gives the reader a general picture of the kinds of dreams that have been set aside. The voices are all different from one another, but they all sound like interrupted

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bits of conversation. However, the diction in “A Dream Deferred” is unique among the collection of voices. It is more formal, as if the speaker is confronting the question about deferred dreams, not with answers or short bursts of Nuance explained

conversation, but with other dramatic questions. In doing so, the diction of the poem “A Dream Deferred” shows the consequences of deferring dreams: Unanswered questions result in more unanswerable questions. In Hughes’s montage of voices, many of the speakers use first-person pronouns (I, my, we, our), and the tone of each voice is informal, full of slang expressions. Occasionally, the speakers in Montage use second-person pronouns (you, your), but the tone of the speakers is still casual, again because the

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Analyzing a Poem speakers use slang. In contrast, the speaker in “A Dream Nuance explained

Deferred” is an observer. The tone of the word choices is different from the rest of the poems in Hughes’s Montage, as if the speaker (Hughes, perhaps) stands outside listening to all the other speakers and asks questions about what he hears. His questions are direct, without slang. He uses ordinary language,

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but his questions are not easy to answer. The ordinary language contrasts with the importance of the questions. For example, in “ A Dream Deferred,” Hughes starts with a question to get his readers thinking about his message: “What happens to a dream deferred?” (line 1). His diction here emphasizes his theme. He uses the word “dream” to mean a hope for or a vision of a better future. The word “dream” is a familiar word to most readers, who understand the importance of having dreams and the chance for fulfilling them. Usually in Complexity explained

English an adjective comes before the noun. By placing “deferred” after the noun, Hughes emphasizes the word “deferred.” The reader notices the word “deferred” and begins to speculate on its meaning. Hughes chooses the word defer for

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Analyzing a Poem its two meanings. It can mean both “to put something off until sometime in the future” and “to give in to what someone else Ambiguity explained

wants.” Hughes uses the word in both ways: Someone else postpones the dream, but the dreamer gives in to the delay. In this way, the diction helps reinforce the theme. Moreover, the question then is, “How long will the dreamer accept the

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postponement of his or her dream?” Second stylistic device: figurative language

In the next part of the poem, Hughes answers this basic question about deferred dreams with a series of similes written as questions. The first simile asks if a deferred dream dries up “like a raisin in the sun” (3). The image of the dried and wrinkled raisin contrasts with the fat, juicy grape the dream

Complexities explained

once was. The images created by the following three similes

Similes

are worse. Does the deferred dream “fester like a sore— / And then run” (4–5) or “stink like rotten meat” (6) or “crust and sugar over— / like a syrupy sweet” (7–8)? The images in these similes seem to say that if a dream is postponed, it rots or spoils or infects the dreamer. In each of the questions, the word choice is casual and dark: “dry up,” “fester,” and “stink” are

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Analyzing a Poem not pretty words to the ear. Yet the informal diction and the figurative language match each other, creating important questions. In contrast, the last simile is not a question but a guess: “Maybe” a deferred dream “just sags / like a heavy load” (9–10). This simile makes the deferred dream seem like a heavy burden carried on the dreamer’s back, making him or her

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bow under its weight. All of these similes—the four questions and the proposed answer—suggest that a deferred dream becomes something terrible, such as a burden, not something bright and hopeful, such as an opportunity for the dreamer. In the poem’s last line, Hughes uses another piece of Metaphor

figurative language, a metaphor—“Or does it explode?” (11)—to address his message. He emphasizes the metaphor even more by using different print from the rest of the poem. He seems to be saying that this is exactly what happens: A deferred dream is a bomb that finally explodes. He might also mean that it is not the dream but the dreamer that explodes—in anger. Of course the consequences of that explosion, for the dreamer and for the reader, are left to the reader’s imagination.

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Analyzing a Poem A striking part of the figurative language is the poem’s imagery and sensory language, even though the effects might Imagery

not be pleasant. The images of “raisin” (3) and “syrupy sweet” (8) appeal to the reader’s sense of taste. They echo the cliché “I wanted [something] so badly that I could taste it.” This time, however, the sweet taste of the dream may be, in the poem, just

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Nuance explained

“rotten meat” (6)—disgusting, providing no nourishment. The sense of touch and the sense of smell are also mentioned by the image of the “heavy load” (10), the festering and running sore (4–5), as well as the “stink” of the rotting meat (6). All of the images work together to surprise the reader. Dreams and their imagined beauty are brought down to ugly reality. The imagery and sensory language reveal the reality.

Third stylistic device: sound

To create his poetry, Hughes would sometimes listen to the music in a jazz club and write as he listened to the sounds and rhythms of the songs. In fact, Hughes begins his Montage, in a section titled “Dream Boogie,” by referring to sound: “Ain’t you heard / The boogie-woogie rumble / Of a dream deferred” (2–4). He picks up that same phrase (“boogie-woogie

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Analyzing a Poem rumble”) and amplifies it with another musical reference in “Boogie: 1 a. m.,” a later poem in the series: “Trilling the treble / And twining the bass / Into midnight ruffles / Of cat-gut lace” (5–8). The sound of “A Dream Deferred” intensifies its meaning even more. Like a piece of jazz music, the poem uses

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Rhyme

rhyme and short bursts of rhythm. The rhymes—“sun/run,” “meat/sweet,” and “load/explode”—pull the ideas behind the

Nuance explained

similes and the metaphor together, repeating and building up the importance of the ideas like a series of notes repeated in

Repetition

music. Repetition of words and phrases, such as “Or” and “Does it” at the beginning of several lines in the poem also creates a series of increasingly intense questions. Similarly, just

Rhythm

as pauses in music provide dynamic rhythms, the lines in the poem have pauses between them, shown by the use of dashes and the skipped lines that set off the central section. Setting off the image of the “heavy load” and emphasizing the last line of the poem suggests that the explosion of the heavy load becomes more significant as the reader slows down to read the

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Analyzing a Poem last line. The last important question of the poem—“Or does it Nuance explained

explode?” (11)—asked after a skipped-line pause, is like a final drumbeat that ends a piece of jazz music.

CONCLUSION

Restatement of thesis

Just what does happen when the achievement of a dream is postponed again and again? Hughes uses the stylistic devices

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of diction, figurative language, and sound to tell his readers Summary of main points

what might happen to a deferred dream. The word “deferred” hints that the dreamer might not always accept the postponement of his or her dream. The five similes seem to say that only the dreamer is hurt. In the final metaphor, however, the deferred dream is a bomb that will eventually explode and hurt many people. Hughes ties the poem together with jazzy

Relation to broader themes in life

rhyme and rhythm. “A Dream Deferred” carries an idea we should all consider—not to let our own dreams become deferred, and not to block others in their quests to follow their own dreams.

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